WaterFilters.NET KDF85-20BB KDF & GAC Combo Filter Video Transcript

Hey everyone, Tony the Filter Doctor here. Today we’re looking at the WaterFilters.NET brand KDF85-20BB. Now, the KDF85-20BB is an industry standard size cartridge, approximately 20 inches in length and 4 ½ inches in diameter. This means it’s going to fit into a vast array of industry standard size filter housings, like for example the one that you see here. Now, the KDF85-20BB is a KDF85 and granular activated carbon combination filter. You see, they combined these two filter media to give the filter a very broad spectrum of contaminant removal. You see, a cartridge like this is typically chosen for really bad water; very troubled water that typically has a really nasty taste and odor issue or possibly even a hydrogen sulfide problem, which is more commonly known as rotten egg smell. Now, if you have tried to remove your rotten egg smell with a regular carbon filter, you’ve probably discovered in short order that they exhaust very quickly when exposed to hydrogen sulfide. That will not be a problem with the KDF media; it is perfect to remove that nasty rotten egg smell. Now, the granular activated carbon, of course, removes a long list of organic and inorganic contaminants, as well as a variety of VOC’s, which are volatile organic compounds. And it will generally make your water taste better, smell better, and just be more palatable. While the KDF, which stands for kinetic degradation fluxion, and is a high purity copper zinc alloy, while the KDF gives the filter a bacteriostatic feature so that microorganisms cannot live and grow in the filter media. And that’s important because they could normally live and grow on carbon alone, but the KDF won’t let that happen. The KDF also, as I already mentioned, does a great job of removing hydrogen sulfide; it also captures heavy metals and will slightly lower your hardness. It’s not a major function of this media, but it does have an effect on calcium, turning some of it into harmless calcite crystals, which cannot precipitate out of the water and form scale. So, it’s really a multi-function media, and that’s what this cartridge is for, this is for water that is very troubled. Now, unfortunately, a filter like this with its’ axial flow design, that means that the water enters in the bottom through these slots and then rises up through the entire bed of media before exiting the filter, unfortunately that axial flow design is not a great choice for a whole house filter application. So, here’s what you need to do. When you’re using these filters, you need to install two filter housings in a parallel configuration; not in series, in parallel. This means basically you split the water line and feed it into two filter housings simultaneously and then remerge the water line after the filter housings. You get better flow, you basically cut the pressure loss in half and you get much better flow rate to the entire home. A single cartridge alone is going to have very heavy pressure loss and very bad flow restriction because KDF is an extremely dense very heavy media, and so water has a difficult time passing through it. But, assuming you can install in a parallel configuration, this is a great choice for highly troubled water that has serious issues. Again, this is the WaterFilters.NET brand KDF85-20BB, and I’m your host Tony the Filter Doctor. Thanks for watching.